Auditors look to personal finances of senators in spending probe

OTTAWA — Federal auditors poring through spending in the Senate have started asking senators for details of their personal finances, as part of efforts to track how money has moved between the Senate and its members.

Senators have corporate expense accounts and credit cards, and the Senate is supposed to offer all such information to the auditor general’s office.

The Senate provided similar documents to the RCMP, which is probing the questionable spending of senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and former Liberal senator Mac Harb. The RCMP received a court order for banks to turn over account and credit card information for all four as part of a forensic investigation that has focused on allegations of fraud, breach of trust and a separate allegation of bribery against Duffy.

None of the allegations has been tested in court, nor have any charges been laid.

Senate sources say investigators with auditor general Michael Ferguson’s office have asked senators to provide copies of their personal bank and credit card statements. At least one senator’s office questioned the request, noting that access to such documents was not included in the terms of reference for the comprehensive audit.

The Senate sources spoke to Postmedia News under condition of anonymity because none was authorized to make public statements about the audit.

Ferguson’s office has declined to comment on the audit as a general rule, but said that it requires personal banking details if they have been used in government business.

“We request those documents that are necessary to conduct the audit,” said spokesman Ghislain Desjardins. “To the degree that personal accounts were used to conduct government business or any matter related to the audit, those accounts would by nature be relevant to the audit and consequently documents that should be reviewed by the auditors.”

The review of Senate spending has given Ferguson’s office unprecedented access to the red chamber’s books. Teams of investigators have been going into senators’ offices as part of a comprehensive audit the Senate ordered over the summer in response to a spending scandal that has dominated its agenda for a year.

The audit is looking at how senators have spent public funds, and the oversight mechanisms in place to protect abuse of the public purse. Oversight in the chamber has been questioned over how Harb, Wallin, Duffy and Brazeau could make claims for years before being admonished; senators continue to argue those mechanisms worked, notwithstanding the years of approved expense claims and that spending audits for Duffy, Brazeau and Harb were ordered after questions of their appropriateness were raised in the media.

Some senators expressed concerns about giving Ferguson such sweeping access, and have pushed back against some requests Ferguson’s office has made, specifically a request to have senators waive solicitor-client privileges and give auditors access to legal documents.

The Senate’s internal economy committee had expected to receive an interim report from Ferguson’s office before the end of the calendar year. That timeline, however, is not set in stone. Senators left Parliament Hill for their winter break last week and didn’t receive any update from Ferguson.

Senators on the internal economy committee expect to receive an update from Ferguson early next year.

The audit is looking at spending since 2011. The results for every senator, including those who may have retired on time or early, is to be publicly reported now at the end of the audit, expected in January 2015 at the latest.

However, Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau don’t, at the moment, appear to be part of Ferguson’s audit. Any senator being investigated by the RCMP won’t have their expenses reviewed by Ferguson’s investigators.